Events News

10 April 2013, Istanbul. FSC has today presented its plea for a Sustainable Development Goal to the UN Forest Forum, gathered in Turkey for its 10th Annual Meeting.

The proposal, entitled ‘Halting deforestation and forest degradation globally and restoring 15% of currently degraded forest ecosystems: ensuring sustainable management of forests’, has been presented during a dialogue between governments and major groups.

This plea was officially submitted to the UN through the consultation currently taking place, inviting stakeholders for input.

In December last year, the UN started discussions about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of its follow-up to the Rio +20 conference, held in July 2012. Discussions, due to conclude in 2015, currently focus on what role SDGs should have and how they should relate to the follow-up of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the same time, proposals are being submitted on specific subjects, and FSC is convinced that forests should play a prominent role.

FSC’s submission aims to support specific forest-related targets already agreed by the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010, in particular Aichi Targets 5, 7 and 15. It also argues in support of building on the forest criterion of the 7th MDG on ensuring environmental sustainability.

John Hontelez, Chief Advocacy Officer of FSC, explains: “Not having forests under the SDGs would give a wrong signal: that either the fate of forests is not essential for the wider sustainable development agenda, or that problems with forests have been resolved. The UN’s ‘The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012’ shows that forest cover continues to decline rapidly in Africa and Latin America. In Asia the problem of deforestation also continues to exist, despite the current impressive increase of forest cover in China, and to a lesser extent India and Vietnam. And this focus on the quantity of forest cover does not take into account trends in the degradation of forest quality”.

For the official submission, including a detailed motivation, see below.